> when i am reading docs or plugin docs, i often see references to <leader>
>
> like a keybinding is <leader> something.
>
> what is leader ?
It is a character (defaulting to "\") used to allow folks to
choose a "leader" character for mappings such that it allows
users of that mapping/script to choose their "leader" character.
Effectively, it's turns something like
:map <leader>x gg>G
into
:exec ':map '.mapleader.'x gg>G'
This makes use of the mapleader variable (*not* setting, which I
always find odd). So if you didn't want to use "\", you could
change it by doing something like
:let mapleader="_"
And then instead of using "\x" as you would have with the default
settings, you'd now use "_x" to execute your mapping (though the
leader character is bound to the mapping at the time of the
mapping, so you'd have to re-execute the ":map" statement after
changing the value of "mapleader")
You can read about it at
:help mapleader
and its local analog
:help maplocalleader
-tim
